Prowling: FOR PARTNERS

Jim Barthold

Despite some industry coercion, there is still a need for the small, "boutique" technology vendor in the cable industry, as will be evidenced at this year's Western Show.

Some of the bigger players, in fact, can benefit from this diversity.

"There are some that I think will bring innovative solutions," said Dee Dee Nye, VP-cable communications for vending giant Lucent Technologies Inc. "They'll come in niche areas, and quickly."

Nye said Lucent will have personnel prowling the show and if these smaller companies "have something of real value, a technology that we don't have, we're going to look at partnering with them."

A company that used to fall into the niche category - but is growing and expanding its focus beyond that - is C-Cor.net Corp., formerly C-Cor Electronics, which is known primarily for its transmission networks systems.

C-Cor.net has expanded beyond its traditional networking competencies to include Internet-based technologies from Convergence.com Inc. and Silicon Valley Inc., both of which it acquired and will showcase in a separate booth.

The company has adopted a "network life cycle philosophy" that merges the benefits of a small, focused provider with a full systems provider, said David Eng, SVP-sales. "We can actually help them (service providers) with providing the equipment, installing the equipment, proofing the network, following back along the way with some maintenance activities and carrying it all the way through the whole life cycle of the network," he explained.

Small company service; large company capabilities.

"My view is you should stake out the territory that you want to own," said John Trail, director-product line management for Harmonic Inc.'s transmitter systems.

Harmonic, like C-Cor.net, is acquiring companies to expand from its previous position as an optics supplier. At the same time, Trail said, the company is trying to keep that small company focus and flexibility.

"My view is a good company, a solid company, stakes out the area that they own, and then they make open standards," he said. "We're going to have open standard interfaces at the headend to things like telephone systems, CMTS (cable modem termination system) switches. Out at the subscriber side we're going to have open standards to the set-top boxes and cable modems and all those sorts of things."

Despite the innovative, entrepreneurial nature of smaller companies, there is something to be said about the resources a large, integrated electronics vendor can throw into the fray. That, too, will be evident in the large technology booths at the show.

"It's important to have a comprehensive look and overview of the system that generally can only be provided by some of the larger and more well-integrated companies," said John Decker, fiber optic product manager for Philips Electronics.